


Eye Scream

by masonverger_rising



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Eye Trauma, Gen, Gore, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:20:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masonverger_rising/pseuds/masonverger_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mason Verger has had Abigail Hobbs hostage for weeks, and now he has Will Graham too. There's nothing like a little mutilation to bring everyone together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What did you see?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mister13eyond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mister13eyond/gifts).



"Ci scusi padrone, non ama gli insetti," says Carlo as Tommaso heads for the door, "E ‘giovane.  _Imparerà_.”

"No  _problem_ ,” Mason’s distracted, checking the tautness of the straps binding Will Graham to the gurney, “ _hey_ ,” he says and winks at Graham, “isn’t it funny; I’m starting to catch on even when he isn’t speaking english.”

Will’s brain is whirring away, still trying to parse out what exactly is happening to him — Mason Verger,  _that’s_  who has him. That’s the man in front of him, smirking and chatting away like they’re old acquaintances, as though he hadn’t—

With a clatter of hard soles against stainless steel Mason jumps up onto the head of the gurney and sits cross-legged like a child, Will can see him peering down at him, looming over his face. His stomach lurches.

"Now Will — can I call you Will?  _Great_ , now Will, I think it’s  _important_  that we … get to know each other a little now that we’re  _practically family_. I mean Abigail thi—”

“ _Where is she_ ,” Will spits, his gaze is steady and there are sharp points of colour high on his cheeks, “what have you d—”

"Done to her? Oh boy," Mason tuts and shakes his head, "Abigail is safe and sound,  _Dad_ , don’t you worry on that account.”

“ _I saw_ —”

"Oh Carlo, he thinks he  _saw_  something — isn’t that funny?”

Carlo doesn’t answer except for a grunt, too busy at his work bench sorting out tools.

“ _What_  did you see, Will?” Mason leans forward, his cheek close enough to brush against Will’s stubble, and Will can’t even turn his head, can’t bite or scratch or squirm away, “What did you see?”

"The pictures you sent me," his voice is hoarse, choking on the memories that rise up like bile, of the dimly lit, sumptuous bed, the broken-bodied girl sprawled across it, "the things you did to her."

"Pictures  _I_  sent?” Mason pitches his voice up, faux-coy and looks over to Carlo as though he can’t quite believe what he’s just heard, “you  _traced_  something to me?”

Will’s nostrils flare and his lips press into a thin white line. He  _hadn’t_  been able to trace the pictures, they’d been bounced off so many servers it was impossible to tell where they’d come from, or even if they’d come form the same source.

"Can you describe the pictures, Will?"

"Abig—" his voice falters and Mason grins over him, his eyes wide and gleeful behind his glasses, "Abigail on a bed. Nude. Bruises on the inner thighs, and a—"  _horrific, livid, horrendous, terrifying_ , “—bite mark on her b-breast,” and Will hates that he can picture it so clearly, can call the image to mind in vivid detail, can almost  _smell_  her, the scent of soap and clean hair, blood and sweat.

"Hmm," Mason pats him on the cheek, "well that  _is_  concerning — and when do you  _think_  you saw this?”

"Wh—" Will almost gags, " _think I saw them_?”

“ _Oops_ ,” Mason coos and then tuts, “you know I’d read what Freddie Lounds wrote about you, Will —  _avidly_  — but I didn’t  _believe_  until …  _well_  Abigail always speaks  _so_  fondly of you, why  _shouldn’t_  I have taken her word over some  _tabloid_ journalist, hm?”

“ _What are you_ —”

"Carlo, it seems that  _Will_  here has been  _seeing things_ ,” Mason grins, looking down at Will while he talks, “you think we can help with that?”

“ _Si_ ,” Carlo says, and it’s the closest to  _cheerful_  that he’s capable of sounding.

“ _No,_ " Will says, "whatever you’re planning, whatever game you’re playing  _stop_ , just let me see Abigail. Just let me see she’s alright,” he’s breathing heavily already, his heart racing.

"Shush, not to worry, Will, we’ll have you sorted out in no time."

Carlo returns with a small tray of instruments that he sets down on a trestle table he nods and Mason reaches for Will’s face, very carefully pulls his left eyelid open.

“ _No_ , no,  _don’t_ ,” Will is having trouble breathing, the strap tight across his chest seems to be crushing him, “ _stop_ , stop it — whatever you want from me, just s-stop!”

"You should probably stop talking," Mason says casually, "you’re shaking around a little."

Carlo has an array of eyelid speculums which he holds up for Will to see — he works quickly, with a kind of delicacy that doesn’t seem possible for a man of his stature, gently peeling back Will’s eyelids and securing them so that he can’t blink. Will’s eyes begin to burn almost immediately.

"Now it’s my turn," Mason says, and smiling picks up a book from somewhere behind him, "I’ve been doing some reading, Will — gotta say, it’s pretty well written for a [text book](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BWZZNs3CcAAV_Hu.jpg). Very descriptive. I was  _particularly_  interested in the section that covered myiasis. I mean I’ve  _seen_  what that does to an animal.  _Fascinating_ , isn’t it?”

"Oh god," Will chokes out, " _don’t_.”

But Mason just smiles and reaches out to take a container that Carlo is holding out for him. Will can see the shapes through the plastic, the tiny, writhing bodies and he feels acid rising in his throat, his breath leaves him and he thinks for a second that he might be having a heart attack.

No such luck.

Mason carefully opens the container and uses a pair of tweezers to lift out a wriggling maggot; it’s small, only five millimetres from end to end. But it will grow.

"Now you might recognise this one, Will — cochliomyia hominivorax — a real piece of work, isn’t it?"

“ _Screw worms?_ " Will can see it writhing in the tweezers, even though his vision is blurring and doubling, his eyes burning dry and aching. This is insane, Mason  _has_  to be insane. Or Will is dreaming, a nightmare, trapped here by the man who hurt Abigail,  _worse_ , who made a  _spectacle_  of her suffering and now —

Mason places the maggot in Will’s eye socket, on the bright pink flesh and Will wishes for a second that his heart would stop, that he’d just stroke out before —

The maggot begins burrowing into the sensitive membrane under Will’s eye; it stings at first, like grit caught under his eyelid, and then the pain hits like a hot needle racing through the skin, through his sinuses, nerves that don’t know how to process what he’s experiencing, pain radiating from the determined, mindless body chewing into his flesh.

He can’t scream, can’t get enough air into his lungs, the sound that Will produces is sheer animal desperation. Mason shares out the maggots evenly between Will’s eye sockets, and Will feels himself shutting down, pulling away from his body in horror.

Will knows exactly what will happen — he  _wrote the book on it_  — these maggots feed on living tissue, and they  _burrow_ ; every twitch, every blink, will make them go deeper, drilling into his soft tissue, shredding him from the inside — they will blind him when they reach the optic nerve. And if they burrow as far as his brain they may well kill him. He might die of infection anyway — an infestation of cochliomyia hominivorax can kill a fully grown cow in ten days.

"There," Mason’s voice seems far away, "all done now — very good, Will, well done! Now I have a surprise —  _someone_  has been waiting to see you; she’s  _very_  excited you know. I think she’s missed you.”

Carlo calls out to someone above them, and on a level above, Abigail steps up to the hand rail, Matteo’s bulk beside her, his hand wrapped around her arm.

Mason’s still talking, still prattling away and hazily Will can see that Abigail is shaking, her hands pressed over her mouth — sobbing, he realises dimly.

Deft hands remove the metal keeping his eyes open and they close reflexively, tears flooding across Will’s face and he imagines that he can  _hear_  the maggots already, the wet crackling as they chew through him, into him.

Someone begins to scream.


	2. How's Dad?

“ _Shush_  Abigail, he’s not dead,” Mason strokes her hair and she ducks away from his hand. He slaps her and she staggers back into Carlo who steadies her and then holds her by the arms, fingers digging into her flesh.

Mason’s smiling, his eyes bright and he walks over to the hospital bed where Will Graham has been lying for the past two days, fingers the IV drip that feeds a cocktail of antibiotics and saline that make sure Graham can’t quit the game early.

No pain-killers, of course. There is a nurse on hand to make sure that his vitals don’t drop and to keep him awake and aware when Mason wants to play.

Will Graham is awake.

His eyes are swollen closed, eyelids red and inflamed. His lower left eyelid has begun to collapse, the tunnelled flesh open and oozing. If you watch for long enough it is possible to see the white, fleshy bodies of the screw worms moving past the opening. Grown now. As thick as the tip of Will’s little finger.

His eyes still twitch under the lids, though the nurse has reported that he is blind; the optic nerves destroyed.

Mason pushes his fingers through Graham’s sweat-soaked hair, reaching out with his other hand to beckon Abigail closer to the bed. Carlo pushes her forward when she refuses to move.

“ _No, please stop it — I’ll do anything —,_ " her voice cracks when she sees Will twitch at the sound of her voice.

"I know you’ll do  _anything_ ,” Mason coos, “right now, I want you to look at your  _dad_  here. You were  _so_  worried about him, after all.”

"No,  _no_ _please_  —”

"No  _what_ , Abigail?” Mason’s voice is a faux-gentle croon.

Even beyond exhausted, beyond the point where he thinks he anything can be worse than what he’s already endured, Will flinches, his gut churning at the sound of that voice.

Mason is chatting away, whispering sweet horrors to Abigail and she’s sobbing but then Mason’s voice stops and Will feels the unmistakeable press of those too-full lips against the ruin of his eyelid.


End file.
